On 2002-10-14 at 19:48:23, Mark J. Reed wrote: > Actually, 1/0 is not NaN; it's +Infinity. You only get NaN out of > dividing by 0 if the numerator is either infinite or also 0. > The reason most implementations throw an error on division by 0 > is that they either don't have a representation for infinity > (not a problem in IEEE floating point) or the rest of the arithmetic > operations don't behave sensibly when handed an infinite value.
Well, let me backpedal a bit, here. I realize the above is mathematically simplistic. The real reason y = x/0 returns an error is because no matter what value you assign to y, you aren't going to get x back via multiplying y by 0. Certainly 0 times infinity is not going to give you back your original numerator; the infinity value of x/0 is just a convention, inspired by the fact that the *limit* of x/z as z approaches 0 is infinity. So it's probably a good idea when doing $y = $x/$z to notice that $z is 0 before later trying to get $x back by multiplying $y * $z. I suspect the erroneousness of division by 0 should be pragmatically controlled. -- Mark REED | CNN Internet Technology 1 CNN Center Rm SW0831G | [EMAIL PROTECTED] Atlanta, GA 30348 USA | +1 404 827 4754
